Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??  (Read 4577 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Korodny

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Mar 2002
  • Posts: 46
    • Show only replies by Korodny
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #14 on: November 08, 2002, 12:02:46 PM »
@MacMiga:

Quote

I don't WANT to put the 1200 board IN the PC it's supposed to be an *expansion chassis*! The drives and CatWeasel ive i nthe AT cas ea the A1200 sits on top. SEE???


Yeah, but what's the advantage? Just put the A1200 motherboard in the tower case and use a keyboard adaptor to connect your A1200 keyboard to it -> this way you'll only have one cable between tower case and A1200 case and there won't be any problems with cable lengths.

If you don't want to use a PCI bus board (which is also available for A1200 computers that are not equipped with a PPC accellerator btw.), you can use pretty much any tower (a long as it's big enough) and place it in the case any way you like. Just remove some parts of the cases's backplane (like the slot cage) to feed your cables (serial, parallel, joy+mouse ec.) to the A1200's ports.
 

Offline MrZammler

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 720
    • Show only replies by MrZammler
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #15 on: November 08, 2002, 12:11:32 PM »
@MacMiga

ok, I completelly agree with you on this one. I do too like the desktop A1200 case very much, and a PC tower is too damn ugly to host my miggy. So here's the deal:

1) Get a 2,5 hard disk and put it in.
2) Get a BPPC
3) Get a BVision, and get the vga cable to the back of the 1200.
4) I think it is also possible to stick an internal cd-rom (one from a laptop) inside the desktop A1200 case.

Now, providing that you can keep the whole thing cool, you'll have yourself a kick ass amiga, and forget about cables extending through the back, sideways, etc.
Anyway is the only way
 

Offline Doobrey

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Oct 2002
  • Posts: 1876
    • Show only replies by Doobrey
    • http://www.doobreynet.co.uk
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #16 on: November 08, 2002, 04:50:47 PM »
@MacMiga
  Sorry, my fault I did misread the original post.

Now I understand the question (I hope) I do have another point...
 IDE cables are only meant to be used internally. Not that there`s anything against hanging them outta the back and into an "expansion tower".
 For a start, they aren`t shielded, so you could get noise/interference into the data signals.
 Also, AFAIK the maximum recommended length of and IDE cable is about 30 cm. Using a buffered interface wont help extend the useable length, but it will save your CPU if something goes wrong.

 Your idea of sitting the 1200 ontop of the AT case is a good idea, cos that`ll minimize cable length.
Also, you get the ability to power the 1200 from the AT PSU and get rid of the stupid CBM power brick.
 Personally I`d use SCSI in this situation, since it`s faster and can take more devices.

So, yes, it`s a perfectly possible project. AFAIK there were even commercially available case conversions that just held the drives and supplied power.
 
On schedule, and suing
 

Offline Doobrey

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Oct 2002
  • Posts: 1876
    • Show only replies by Doobrey
    • http://www.doobreynet.co.uk
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #17 on: November 08, 2002, 05:02:54 PM »
Quote

WarPiper wrote:

Come on Doobrey, you cant be serious, you dont think it nice to mod up the dull boring case? give me a brake  .


Yeah, modding up cases is great, I`m in the process of sticking my A4000  into a monster PC server case.
 Doing a nice simple spray job on the case (metallic blue) and changing all the LED`s on the case, CD, Zip drive and floppy to use those funky blue LED`s and changing all the fans to be quiet as possible (damn A4000 sounds like a hairdryer at the moment !)

The point I meant was that I can`t see the point in the perspex windows that seems to be all the rage.

 Who was it that first said "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder "? cos I suppose that applies to computer cases as much as it does to painting, sculptures etc  
On schedule, and suing
 

Offline The_Editor

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 1863
    • Show only replies by The_Editor
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #18 on: November 08, 2002, 09:27:32 PM »
Hey doobrey, your right..

Different strokes and all that.

So heres a piccie of the tower without the perspex window.  And heres the black one again without the window

Btw... MacMiga,  I was winding you up !!   :-D

The Reluctant Pom
 

Offline Doobrey

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Oct 2002
  • Posts: 1876
    • Show only replies by Doobrey
    • http://www.doobreynet.co.uk
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #19 on: November 08, 2002, 11:04:19 PM »
@ The Editor

 Wow, those cases look like a great starting point.

I can just imagine blue light coming from behind the bottom louvres, and a bright VFD display where that silly little LCD one is on the top.
 Not sure about the big "X" panel, ..maybe put in a drive window like the 4000T had.
 Maybe even a big blue butterfly painted on the side ;)
On schedule, and suing
 

  • Guest
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #20 on: November 09, 2002, 12:56:55 AM »
Firstly I'll appologise for being such a stroppy sox. I was tired the other night. Hard day, sore fingers (from PSU hacking and soldering) and a headache from the fumes.

@Ed

Now even I could possibly be dragged into this tower case conversation! That Al Xaser II 6000 is a pukka case. Personally however I'd be too tempted to build a phat PC in it instead :-D Imagine an emulated Amiga running on an AthlonXP 2600+ in there, through Windows 2000. I suppose an AmigaONE G3/G4/700 would be faster though but hey ;-)

As for your wind up I'm not amused :-o:-P ;-)

@Doobrey

Hows about using 80-conductor high density ATA cable. It is screened (every wire is seperated by a screen wire to reduce cross-talk between wires) and I imagine it would make longer distance possible with slower IDE buses, like that on the A1200.

@Everyone generally

I have the AT Desktop case for the external chassis. Who said I was using a tower - I'm sure I said I was using a Desktop. You guys must have a fixation with tall rigid things or something ;-)

I managed to rig my A600 so the floppy was i nthe PC case and I had the floppy cable sticking out of the bottom of the trapdoor. From there I plugged an old extension cable I had from a PC project in tot the floppy drive and brought it out of one of the 5.25" bay holes i nthe front. The two cables *just* meet with very little to spare. Can't really test any further than 'oh the machine sees the floppy' as I have no bootdisks whatsoever.

I had another thought. What if I put a 44-pin cable as far as the trapdoor bay on the A1200 (I'm not likely to put  anything in it for a while) then lead 80-conductor cable from the buffer card to the drives i nthe AT case? The buffer card *may* act as a booster allowing me to run two lengths of cable instead of one long one. Dunno, have to give it a shot. I have an old IDE disk that was loitering in this case so I'll try it with that first.

Has anyone developed on of those drive hammering programs that tests the reliabil8ity of your IDE bus? you know the sorts, that transfer a huge file back and forth a defined number of times and compare it to see if it's being corrupted.

It's all a bit new and novel to me this Amiga thing. I'm trying to learn as fast as I can. That said I am considered one of the foremost authoriries in the worls on Mac LCs and I've only had any 68k Macs for about a year so I learn very fast :-)
 

Offline The_Editor

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 1863
    • Show only replies by The_Editor
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #21 on: November 09, 2002, 03:38:14 PM »
Sounds like  your'd like this kind of case for your desktop  

Me too. !!
The Reluctant Pom
 

  • Guest
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #22 on: November 09, 2002, 05:01:59 PM »
Now that is more LIKE it, somebody buy a plastic maoudlking firm and start turning out blanks and we can sell them as upgrade cassis for the A1200, with optional CD drive, CatWeasel'd floppy and a 4GB 3.5" hard disk. I think most A1200 owners in my situation would lap that up.  We could make it sizable enough to to take an Apollo 1260 or Shark PPC card and a BVision or similar video add on. What a fantasy indeed...
 

Offline The_Editor

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 1863
    • Show only replies by The_Editor
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #23 on: November 09, 2002, 05:07:02 PM »
Not a bad idea...  Amazing that No-one has done that already.  

Might be a bit late now though with Pegasos & A1 imminent.
The Reluctant Pom
 

Offline Ryu

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 1023
    • Show only replies by Ryu
    • http://www.intuitionbase.com
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #24 on: November 09, 2002, 07:22:55 PM »
Man I love the case, the more I look the more I want :) Imagine a nice G3700 with nice onboard sound and gfx in there with a CDRW drive and a 20gig drive couple with OS4.0 :)
Yours
Darren aka Ryu
-----------------------------
www.IntuitionBase.com
My Amiga 1200 webserver
 

Offline Doobrey

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Oct 2002
  • Posts: 1876
    • Show only replies by Doobrey
    • http://www.doobreynet.co.uk
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #25 on: November 09, 2002, 11:19:11 PM »
Quote

MacMiga wrote:
@Doobrey

Hows about using 80-conductor high density ATA cable. It is screened (every wire is seperated by a screen wire to reduce cross-talk between wires) and I imagine it would make longer distance possible with slower IDE buses, like that on the A1200.


I have heard of people using std 40pin IDC cabling upto 80cm in length without problems, I even heard of someone using a 1.5m cable (but it trashed the data on his **customers** new HD , just after he wiped their old one!! )

Cross talk is only part of the problem, using an 80wire ATA cable might help in this respect, but not in others.
 It won`t protect you from outside interference, so the data on your HD could still get trashed along the way.

 At the end of the day, the main factor in the length of cable you can use will be the quality of the buffered IDE interface.

 I`m not an electrical engineer(as testified when my A1200 went up in flames a few years back, but she still runs :-) ), but as I understand it, a cheap and nasty interface might not have the guts to drive the signals at the proper logic levels over a longer cable.


On schedule, and suing
 

  • Guest
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #26 on: November 10, 2002, 12:44:22 AM »
@Doobrey

Quote

At the end of the day, the main factor in the length of cable you can use will be the quality of the buffered IDE interface.

I`m not an electrical engineer(as testified when my A1200 went up in flames a few years back, but she still runs  ), but as I understand it, a cheap and nasty interface might not have the guts to drive the signals at the proper logic levels over a longer cable.



If I had the money to buy an Apollo 1260 or a PPC card with SCSI I would do it that way and drop the cables out of the trapdoor. I don't so this will have to suffice, I just hope it works reliabley :-)

FWIW Power Computing do sell 44-pin to 40-pin 80cm cables. I think you require a buffered interface to use them.

That is what EyeTech's page said. Basically if you don't use one that is built properly and buffered (many are sold as buffered when they are actually not apparently) thay restrict the cable length. So if I buy one from EyeTech that is supposed to be able to support longer cables then I can hold them to ransom  :-D

I think i need to talk to EyeTech about it really.

@MrZammler

I actually offered up the CD drive out of my iBook ( removeed as dead and awaiting replacement) and I recon if you put the drive in the side above the PCMCIA alost towawrds the back a laptop CD drive woulf fit a 600 or 1200. They are really thin but quite wide, about 5mm wider than a CD. The hard disk is already doable but it might get in the way of the CD drive unless you trim off those things that stick up off of the drive carrier (at least they do on a 600 - I don't have a 1200 to look at yet). The PC is a goer but sadly sources here tell me the BVision card won't fit in the Trapdoor bay with the PPC card.
 

Offline WarPiper

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 369
    • Show only replies by WarPiper
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #27 on: November 11, 2002, 01:10:35 AM »
Not for nothing editor, but that really should have been what the 1200 should have looked like. If my 1200 came with a 10GB had drive and the cdrw rom drive (like shown in the picture) with the floppy on the other side, not to mention a 060 ppc blizerd and a bvision card all in that little attractive case, then I would have been happy.  I have always thought that that was a wonderful concept picture for the 1200.  It would be nice if there was a way of commisioning some modler to create a case like that after that design, just with enough room to acccommodate the bvision and blizzerd 060 ppc, I would order one.
There was a time I can remember computers were fun...I miss my A1200.
 

Offline The_Editor

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 1863
    • Show only replies by The_Editor
Re: Cheap A$$ tower kit alternative for 1200??
« Reply #28 from previous page: November 11, 2002, 09:53:20 PM »
Well,  My Thermaltake Xaser 5000 case was delivered today.........

In a word

Beautiful !!

It actually has FIVE silent fans installed  :-o   Nifty cables to put firewire & USB sockets on the front, top panel.

Half a shops worth of nuts & bolts

and .......................................................

A free mousemat & Euro calculator (Wow)

Cant wait to start building my new Ami ....

But it is sorely tempting to stick a screaming Athlon in there.  (If only berniethlon were to be released)
The Reluctant Pom